Let’s talk about loneliness. What does it mean to be lonely? Why do we feel it? Are there any good things about being and feeling lonely? People sometimes do feel lonely, but when ‘sometimes’ becomes ‘most of the time’ is what worries us. Right?
Abe Maslow said that it’s a fundamental need to have social connections (Elizabeth Hopper, 2020), Erikson was a bit more optimistic, he said that loneliness helps with personal growth (Gross, 2020), Cacioppo pushed this further (Holding et al., 2020), and he said that it can lead to cardiovascular disease.
Some of us have a deep feeling of not being good enough, and we hide away from people, feeling unworthy of attention. Those of us who feel this way should start reflecting deeply on the idea of excellence and should start taking steps to avoid a monolithic view of excellence. It’s not you who is worthless! It’s your idea about yourself that may need to be radically re-examined. We often read about people who are projecting their inner world to the outer world (Waytz, 2011), and while there are certainly such kinds of people, they tend to see the world the way they see themselves. But for the purpose of this blog, I will focus more on people who are on the other end of the spectrum. And namely, those who let the world project itself onto them, these are the people who let the wolf into the house. And while the wolf is being a wolf and behaving like a wolf, he does not realize the havoc he creates, and the suffering that follows follows. My interesting observation is that I have seen plenty of times where the two opposites were in the same place as if this was their fate. What is the fate of the cornered and frightened rat face to face with a ferocious and mischievous cat? I guess we know the answer.
Why doesn’t the rat fight back? Well, in nature the bigger is better and in this case, the cat is bigger and stronger! But what about the world of humans? How different are we from our ancestors who lived in trees a few hundred of thousand of years ago? Well, I guess this blog would be nowhere near enough in terms of length to give even just a glimpse of how different we are from our tree-dweller cousins. But I will give you a hint: not very different…
So, then back to loneliness. Throughout my life, I came across people who seemed to punish themselves. These people told me that they see the evils of the world in themselves, so they want to punish the devil in themselves. Upon hearing this immediately Freud (Carveth, 2006) came to my mind, whereby he postulated that certain people tend to punish their unconscious guilt. This is some kind of spiritual masochism, I guess. But this is different, as they let the evils of the world crawl and slither inside their mind as if they would voluntarily let the lord of darkness creep into them.
In this kind of situation, there is no wonder how some people may feel the weight of loneliness on their shoulders. Think about prisoners. Or worse, think about solitary confinement. What a punishment, right? Spending a week totally alone can feel like torture, let alone a year. We know that followers of pagan religion (I don’t like the word pagan) have not understood the idea of sin. And consequently, they didn’t quite understand the idea of guilt. People lived out their extreme experiences without feeling guilty. In other words, the Gods were angry, but they did not punish their followers. Then came the Judeo-Christian monotheist religion into the picture and has brought with it the idea of sin and guilt. Every extreme value was from then on labelled wrong and sinful Esqueda, 2011).
I wonder, but just wonder, whether all these people who punish themselves for the ‘sins’ of the world aren’t some sort of reincarnation of Judeo-Christian saints from the past? Now we are getting into metaphysical realms, or rather spiritual. But the question deserves epistemological attention, if not poetic. Imagine a world where your family members, relatives and friends and in general your community are characterized by greed, selfishness, secrecy and manipulation, and their only aim is winning. Economic power is the only thing that matters. Then it’s hard not to imagine that YOU will certainly feel distrust, anxiety, feeling of discrimination and burnout. And if you are the type of person who prefers to avoid conflict, retribution and disrespectful behaviour, then you are the type of person who would instead find peace of mind in solitude.
I wonder if these people deliberately choose not to ‘fight back’, because they feel that if they would fight back, then they would be the same as those who cause the trouble. They refuse to listen to their Darwinian fitness-enhancing behaviour, the kind of behaviour which would help them to stay in the ‘ring of life’ to succeed. As if they would think this is sinful, fighting is sinful, because fighting whether physically or fighting with words will lead to injury, whether they are physical or mental. An ancient knowledge that is. Don’t do things to others you wouldn’t like to do to yourself. This knowledge predates Christian morals. The essence of sin is never the action, but the decision which comes before action. The prohibition regarding the Tree of Knowledge is about the following two things:
- Don’t be all-knowing!
- Don’t be immortal!
In other words:
Don’t be God, because you are not there yet!… morally you haven’t walked your path through just yet, mentally you are not there yet… so don’t be God before your time, because something terrible can come out of it if you’ll be.
So, then what is the fate of this kind of people if they choose not to be God and not to play God in an environment where the norm is ironically indeed to fake to be God and play God? One word: loneliness.
And now let’s look at the bright side of it. I have a deep feeling that these people are ahead of their environment because they don’t want to succeed to survive. For them survival is normal, they may think in this modern world everyone should live very well with the resources humanity possesses. So, it’s futile to give so much credit to the Darwinian genes. For them, positive deviance is what matters. Flourishing, thriving, virtuousness and resilience are what really matter. They tend to focus on the enablers like capabilities and abilities, methods and processes. And of course, to motivation such as altruism, contribution and unselfishness. They may seek to find ways to bring about the best of the human condition. And they are right to think that human excellence and goodness are not illusions. They tend to ask questions that strengthen the community’s ability to understand, anticipate and heighten positive potential and human traits. Some people might confuse prosocial behaviour with selfish acts to fulfil egotistical needs while using empathy and altruism as means. Let us not go there, from a purely utilitarian perspective this may be unimportant. You can use your selfishness to do good in the world.
Loneliness as we see it can be a force of good and a force of bad, should we hide our loneliness, should we fake that we are very social? I cannot answer this question, but it’s up to you. If you use the force behind your loneliness to create and do something positive with it, then I guess it does not matter much. The intention matters more than the act when it comes to lying. Do you hide and lie voluntarily, or do you do it in order to achieve a positive goal with it? Like in a job interview, you may want to come across as a bit more extroverted than usually you are, in order to ‘sell yourself’. If you do a job well done, your prospective colleagues and managers should have no business in your personal life, that’s confidential!
Bibliography
Carveth, D. (2006). Self-punishment as guilt evasion: theoretical issues. Canadian Journal of Psychoanalysis, 14(2).
Elizabeth Hopper. (2020). Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Explained. Business, April.
Esqueda, O. J. (2011). Sin and Christian Teaching. Christian Education Journal: Research on Educational Ministry, 8(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/073989131100800111
Gross, Y. (2020). Erikson’s Stages of Psychosocial Development. In The Wiley Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119547143.ch31
Holding, E., Thompson, J., Foster, A., & Haywood, A. (2020). Connecting communities: A qualitative investigation of the challenges in delivering a national social prescribing service to reduce loneliness. Health and Social Care in the Community, 28(5). https://doi.org/10.1111/hsc.12976
Waytz, A. (2011). Two mechanisms for simulating other minds: Dissociations between mirroring and self-projection. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 20(3). https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721411409007
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